The present invention relates to an NC tape producing system, in which an operator can make an NC tape by simple operation of a mini-computer.
NC (Numerical Control) machine tools operate with a NC program, which is realized on a paper tape, magnetic disk, magnetic tape, and/or other information storage medium. An NC program which operates an NC machine tool is in a machine language, which is very difficult for man to understand. Therefore, automatic programming in which a man writes a program in a problem oriented language which is automatically translated to an NC program in machine language, is conveniently utilized. A program in a problem oriented language is sometimes called a source program. In an automatic programming, an appropriately programmed computer translates a source language program to a machine language program which can control an NC machine tool.
However, a prior automatic programming system has the following disadvantages.
First, according to a prior automatic programming system, the operation of a computer is very difficult for an NC machine operator. Since a prior computer system has a complicated operating system, a person who operates the computer system must exercise the operating system of the particular computer. In order to solve the above problem, some approaches have been done by using a mini-computer and/or time-sharing computer system. However, those approaches can not completely solve the problem that the operation of a computer system is difficult.
Secondly, an NC program must also be debugged to remove the errors of a program. When an NC program is changed by a debugging, a translation from a source language to a machine language must be accomplished again. Since the debugging occurs very often, the translation must also be accomplished very often. As the operation of a prior computer system is complicated, the debugging is also complicated and is time consuming.